Charcoal cooking, especially barbecue, is popular worldwide. In recent years, use of exotic cooking woods, such as mesquite, have grown in popularity. Many different types of charcoal cookers, stoves and grills are now produced, as well as charcoal starter fluid and bagged charcoal, which account for hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and a wide variety of cooking techniques and portability.
Although many products exist for using charcoal, few, if any portable products are commercially available that enable home owners to make charcoal, safely and efficiently for immediate use in charcoal grills.
Charcoal is an amorphous, porous form of carbon made by the destructive distillation of almost any carbonaceous material, by applying high heat to the material and allowing little or no air passage.
Modern methods use retorts or kilns to carbonize the raw material. The residue is then collected and, when wood is used, pressed into the common briquette form. A method still used in Southeast Asia produces charcoal by stacking wood in large piles, covered with earth. A fire is then started through a small opening left in the top of the stack. The wood is allowed to smolder for about 10 days, after which the fire is smothered and the charcoal is collected. Both procedures are lengthy and laborious.
For home use, the charcoal process must take minutes instead of days. The present invention provides a device that will make charcoal from wood blocks in approximately thirty minutes.
It is an object of this invention to provide a safe, fast, convenient, method of making charcoal from wood pieces in a portable device for immediate use.
It is another object of this invention to produce a charcoal maker that can also efficiently start commercial charcoal for immediate cooking use.